Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Kumari Selja has written to Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde asking for immediate measures to ensure that the Rs 678.91 crore, which the Delhi government had diverted from the Scheduled Caste Sub-Plan (SCSP) to Commonwealth Games, is recouped as soon as possible.

She also wrote that instructions should be issued that such diversion of funds should not happen in future.

"I understand that the government of NCT of Delhi has been making efforts to add back the entire diverted amount of Rs 678.91 crore in the SCSP Plan from 2010-11 onwards and has also formulated some new schemes for the welfare of scheduled caste communities. However, despite these efforts, the entire amount is yet to be recouped. The matter has already elicited the attention of the Parliament and, therefore, requires to be settled on priority basis," Selja's letter dated February 8 read.

SCSP envisages allocation of funds for projects and schemes for the benefit of scheduled castes in proportion to their population percentage.

Various ministries/departments have differential commitments under SCSP as laid down by the taskforce led by Narendra Jadhav in 2010 but the bottomline for SCSP is that these are funds that cannot be diverted.

The issue first came to the fore in July 2010 when an NGO citing RTI replies accused the Delhi government of systematic diversion of SCSP funds over several years for CWG, a charge that was subsequently accepted by the then Home Minister P Chidambaram in Parliament.

Invoking Chidamabaram's commitment on the floor of the House that the entire diverted fund would be restored in SCSP, Selja in her letter to Shinde has sought his personal intervention in the matter.

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